Some patients are required to take medicines, vitamins, and the like every day. In light of this factor such consumption becomes a very routine and repetitive, it is common to find that a person will not remember whether she has lately taken her scheduled medication. For instance, a person of sound mind but forgetful habits may find herself shortly after breakfast trying to recall whether she took at breakfast her collection of pills. A more important failing is that the person cannot remember how much of a particular consumable she is to take, especially when the information is not printed the label of the bottle holding it.
Moreover, in the medical treatment of one or more patients prescribed with a singular or a plurality of variously timed frequency of drug intake, there have been a multitude of mistakes committed by the patients, the medical personnel and home care specialists thus resulting in the undesired drug dosage as well as over-dosage that clinically affect millions of patients in an adverse manner. The problem behind these unwanted occurrences is largely because of patients and care takers not having drug dispensing system which displays the medication in an attention reaching format within an organized display.
Prior art drug reminder containers are well known and the patent art is crowded with patents describing systems for alerting patients to take their medication. Most prior art alert containers contain a supply of the same dosage which is taken several times a day at a predetermined time. These types of alert containers include a sounding device or may illuminate to warn a patient to take the prescribed dosage.
Some devices are known for specific use with pills. For example, a container may have a plurality of compartments, each identified according to the day and time period at which the pills are to be taken. Typically, the patient fills each compartment beforehand with the pills to be taken at each scheduled time. Thereafter she removes them from each labeled compartment when the predetermined time arrives and congests the dosage. While effective, this system requires the patient or care taker to handle the medication and sort each pill from their normal containers into the compartments. The transfer of pills can be tedious and chances of error increase with a more variety of pills.
Patients taking pills and medications on a time oriented schedule is a difficult task for many people, especially the elderly. While it is often difficult to remember the dosage and type of pills that need to be taken, it is also tough to remember if the necessary pills have already been taken. Depending on the medication being taken, it can be dangerous to a person's health or mental well being if a dosage is missed or accidentally exceeded because the person forgot that they already took the proper dosage.
More recent attempts to overcome the problems of prior art containers are the use of an automated container which improves patient compliance in taking the appropriate medication on schedule. Dosing regimens that require the patient to take different doses of different medications at different times can be particularly confusing. For example, a prescription that requires a patient to take three doses of a first medication and one dose of a second medication can be confusing. A patient can inadvertently take one dose of the first medication and three doses of the second medication. In addition, some medications are taken in a paired dosing regimen, with the first medication taken on Monday, and the second medication being taken on Tuesday, the first medication on Wednesday, etc. Some medications are not intended to be taken together at all because they either neutralize each other or cause adverse side effects that can result in illness or even death. This situation is particularly troublesome when more than one physician is prescribing medication to the patient. Most medication containers designed for a patient's personal use on an out-patient basis do not assist the patient in taking the correct medication at the correct time, particularly when several medications have been prescribed.
The patent to Edelstein U.S. Pat. No. 4,890,741 discloses a capsule package including a medication storage compartment with a child-resistant cap assembly, and a smaller compartment for receiving the cap assembly of another receptacle. Instructions for taking the medication may be stored in the smaller compartment. However, Edelstein is intended for holding a bulk quantity of each medication in each container, it is not suitable for pre-organizing the dosages to be taken at future times.
The patent to Price U.S. Pat. No. 5,720,392 discloses a prescription timer for indicating when a person took a pill or when he/she is next scheduled to take a dose of medication. The timer may be attached to a pill bottle having a cap. However, Price only provides a single compartment, making it unsuitable for use with multiple medications.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,335 discloses a medication container, including a method for using the container. The container takes the form of a clock face, with compartments corresponding to the hours of the day. Boyer is best suited for a person who must take medication at virtually every hour of the day. However, Boyer does not allow a user to pre-arrange medication for a period longer than a single day.
Other types of medication containers that remind a patient to take their medication or keep track of the number of doses of medication in the container are well known. Examples of such automated containers are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,227,127 (Gayle); U.S. Pat. No. 4,207,992 (Brown); U.S. Pat. No. 4,360,125 (Martindale); U.S. Pat. No. 4,483,626 (Noble); U.S. Pat. No. 4,504,153 (Schollmeyer); U.S. Pat. No. 4,526,474 (Simon); U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,606 (Lewis); U.S. Pat. No. 4,695,954 (Rose); U.S. Pat. No. 4,725,997 (Urguhart); U.S. Pat. No. 4,939,705 (Hamilton); U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,709 (Weinstein); U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,463 (Lloyd); U.S. Pat. No. 5,181,189 (Hafler); U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,332 (Kraft); U.S. Pat. No. 5,313,439 (Albeck); U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,952 (Bowden); and U.S. Pat. No. 5,472,113 (Shaw) and, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference.
The present invention overcomes these and other limitations in existing medication dispensing products. Thus, there exists a need for an automated system for providing a patient with a visual and alarm alert case which holds a multiplicity of pills for dosages at predetermined times of the day for each month.
With specific reference now to the figures in detail, it is stressed that the particulars shown are by way of example and for purposes of illustrative discussion of the preferred embodiments of the present invention only and are presented in the cause of providing what is believed to be the most useful and readily understood description of the principles and conceptual aspects of the invention. In this regard, no attempt is made to show structural details of the invention in more detail than is necessary for a fundamental understanding of the invention, the description taken with the drawings making apparent to those skilled in the art how the several forms of the invention may be embodied in practice.